joe what?i'm reacting to the number of headlines and articles centred around the fact that he's not white. beyond that i'm not interested in his ancestory. like i said above, not a 'black' man, but a 'good' man. as a real piece of work you mean, someone who is over the US election and focused on the NZ election?

Did you see those offending headlines and articles here at PA? Nope, you popped in to strut your fine, focused & ever-so-politically-buffed mind. Forget my post, Mark. It was made before I realised that you're "special".

if you didn't find what i wrote coherent Giovanni, if you couldn't understand it giovanni, then what was it that prompted you to tell me it was wank?

surely if you don't get it you jsut leave well alone

i'll give you another shot though, because admittedly it may a bit of a stretch:

"i do feel concern that there seems to be more celebration in NZ over the US voting in a black president than there ever was in NZ electing a female prime minister.

not forgetting that for days there has been an ad to the right of these boards reminding us that all politicians are liars

furthermore considering the closest 'darky' to reaching the top position in NZ has just been more or less politically castrated for doing little more than accept donations

in light of the fact that obama's victory was inextricably inked by a victory of donations and capital raised.

knowing full well that when a maori finally attains the coveted NZ captaincy there won't be half the hyperbole. (which does highlight something positive about our nature)

and no disrespect to to Obama; he has great teeth and and has said the right words. I'm just left with kind of in awe of how successful the wires and wirelesses have been in turning the droves into US drones.like a giant Truman show.

just days out from a NZ election where neither of the major parties has suggested anything more than fresh ways to tread water.

congratulations to the Obama campaign,

4 more years of totalitarianism thereand NZ is about to start its next 3 year tour of dutywith scant choice between two 20th century monolithsmost distinguished by the frequency of the light bouncing off the representatives respective neckties and flare;

made all the more worrying by R.B's lack of a post today just hours out, to remind us that yes, yesterday was history but Saturday could also be, albeit not on the grand scale of the greatest sporting extravaganza on earth, just witnessed. but

most relevant."

I'd argue nothing a 6th form english student couldn't get the basic gist of.

I didn't know ben, I'm sorry. I try to put the full stops where they should go. sometimes i'm not sure about the commas, i rarely have time for capitals. is it really hard to read without the capitals?

sometimes instead of a full stop i just leave a space

but as a first language speaker, i've seen worse on the internet, and never had a problem reading anything except that textspeak, sure sometimes commas could help a bit, but i find a comma in the wrong place can be more misleading than no comma.

but ok. i'll try to make more effort with my punctuation in future.

Joe Wylie I'm not claiming any kind of political expertize,that's no master deduction there..I don't feel I'm the only one that posts here that doesn't possess more than a novice's understanding of politics.

However regarding the bulk of your correspondence with me today, to clarify. I have no racial prejudice, and hope you will refrain from implying so. At least for accuracy's sake,

OK, this thread is now totally ridiculous and I'm a shrew (I'm apparently 'benignly' insulted, though, so I suppose I should count myself lucky), and you know what? I don't care, because I just saw a clip of Maya Angelou reciting 'I Rise' on the CBS Early Show this morning, and I saw Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart try to hold back tears last night on the Daily Show election special, and this morning I saw a photo of a young African-American man joyously yelling 'my president is black! my president is black!' wearing an Obama/Aladdin Sane t-shirt in Chicago last night, and I still think this is fucking awesome. Even if it's all shittiness and compromise and horrible disillusionment after this, I'm going to remember these few days.

Sorry if i caused any offense Danielle, I'm sure shrew wasn't the worst thing you've ever been called, and again i should clarify it's a bit of a delayed reaction to the 'baby making machines'. enjoy your evening.

We're only on this thread because there's a lot to talk about and Russell hasn't started a new one.

Mark injected some life in with the worlds mildest troll, and was a bit shocked that a generally jubilant chorus had found their first victim. Or faux shocked I think.

Personally I'm jubilant but that's tempered by the generally right wing company I keep. Had my first meeting today with a 'middle NZer' who desperately wants to get rid of Labour/Green. Not for any reason that wasn't totally disputable, of course, but it says a lot about the way things are going. And many of my colleagues are Utah mormons who seemed determined yesterday to ignore the news except to rag on the likely outcome.

Saturday is shaping up to be a bumout. A surreal one when I consider that about 5 years ago I was totally happy with the way NZ was going and very bitter about international prospects. It's been that way my whole life. I think NZ is 'out of phase' with the rest of the world. One of the main things this middle NZer liked was the '3 strikes and you're out' thing, but I can't help but see it's only purpose is for toadying up to Bush Administration, which will be gone around the time our own parliament comes back from holiday.

Of course Wall Street is still up shit creek, because electing Obama isn't going to lift declining profits, or bail out bad debt or any of the other crappy things that will happen over the next couple of months or more to keep depressing markets.

Still, over the long term, it's a damned good thing, and that'll keep me happy until Saturday night.

Bloody hell! I pop off to Welly for lunch with some spin doctors (more of which later) and it all goes funny ...

Did it start here?

@Mark

well mixing it up would have been a little more interesting, very little written here this year about Ralph Nadar. understandably... I don't know, i just find it hard to read things that are so one sided. Sure it's a leftwing site, and i piss in that direction, but that doesn't leave much space for unchummy discourse.. hence the malcontent aired today at the mildest issuance of disloyalty to the site protocol.

Well friggin' make some sort of argument instead of being all passive-aggressive and snotty about everyone else here. You'll find people will happily engage you if you do them the credit of advancing a proposition.

Let me start there: Nader calling Obama an "Uncle Tom" yesterday was a pathetic act that suggests nothing so much as that Nader should just retire from public life before he further embarrasses himself. It was an extraordinary act of arrogance from a man who is 30 years past his use-by date.

When I get drunk (as I am now, in fact), I'm very amorous and sentimental.

At least I assume Mr Taslov is drunk - that is the most charitable interpretation I can put on his... almost Dadaist ramblings. "Zang tumb tumb" anyone? A game of Exquisite Corpse perhaps or maybe a Burroughsean cut-up?

Hi just popping in while cooking prawn mala bari, but don't want to read 15 pages really and then I saw a black thing goin' on (albeit @ 5 so want to add only cos my man is white english and I am irish spenglish but please, it is different to be black and no kudos , it just is easier to understand when you grow up being that way(I discover this in many conversations with my man) ,no matter what one may think

Nader calling Obama an "Uncle Tom" yesterday was a pathetic act that suggests nothing so much as that Nader should just retire from public life before he further embarrasses himself. It was an extraordinary act of arrogance from a man who is 30 years past his use-by date.

Khrist, he really said that? While I haven't paid much attention to his doings in decades, He was someone I used to respect.

Mark injected some life in with the worlds mildest troll . . .

Oh come on, racist intent is pretty vile even when it's presented in such a garbled fashion.